I am off again… this time to Florida to visit the parents. The trip is different, this time I am flying cross country during the day… I prefer red-eyes… overnight arriving early the next morning… normally I sleep, this time I can’t… So I will read, maybe work on the blog.
So its up early, Steph dropped me at the airport… wait in line to check a bag… then a line for security… really a line to have ID checked, a line to put your stuff through the scanner, a mercifully short line for the metal detector, then wait for the stuff to emerge…
Now that we have to remove belts as well as jackets and hats they need to increase the space at the exit, to give people more time to reclaim their belongings and dress… As we approach boarding time I not that there isn’t a plane… it arrives a few moments later… just a little late…
Southwest asks you to line up in boarding pass order… but doesn’t provide room, people push through those already in place… with roller bags and large dufffles. Practice for the chaos once we board, scrambling for the best seats and a place to stuff our luggage.
While the boarding passes have a neat little dashed line carefully marked “fold here” everyone, really everyone folds the paper in the middle… a half inch below the neatly and carefully marked line… they could just reformat the boarding pass, to place the line in the center… but that would reduce the amount of space available below for advertizing…
Once aboard, the flight attendant (formerly when flight was more exciting, the stewardess) announces “We would like to get you out of here on time…” (which begs the question, why wasn’t the plane here on time to allow us to board…)
The flight was fine… but a bit weird… I don’t usually fly eastbound during the day, preferring red-eye flights… so its difficult to sleep… Unlike my favorite airline, Virgin, Southwest does not provide entertainment beyond trying to beg more peanuts from the flight crew… I read, a try to nap… we land at Phoenix… I rush to make my connection… we fly again… I read, again, I nap, this time with some success… I stare out the window… the Mississippi delta passes below… I can see the oil containment booms… across the gulf, into a thunder storm, which prevents us from landing at Tampa… we approach the coast, turn away, approach again, then turn away again before proceeding in for a landing.
Once on the ground I find Dad waiting… together we wait for the bag… the storm has delayed many flights and no less than 8 Southwest flights have landed in about 5 minutes… so the bags are slow in appearing on carousel.
Dad is fine, if a bit deaf… but well. We drive to their house… Mom is not the lady I remember… so much older, so much smaller, frail, unsure of herself… but thankfully still Mom…
My borther arrives the next day. Together we spend a week with Mom… A good week… We cook dinner each day… we take her out a couple of times… We spend time looking at old photos… many are packed to come home…at the end I feel better…
Now It is Sunday, and I am at the Tampa airport… with a beer, waiting for my flight home… It is raining… a heavy tropic downpour… thunder and lighting… The weather has been this way all week. My flight to Phoenix was over booked, so I volunteered to take the bump on my flight, and am leaving an hour late, flying through Denver instead of Phoenix… for an hour of my time I received a $600.00 flight voucher… not a bad trade. I will be here again sooner rather than later... Better yet Tampa’s airport has free wifi, so I finally get to blog…
The lighting continues… the thunder suggesting the storm is directly overhead… the cable TV is out, a victim of the storm…
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